Imagine What We Can Be Together - Our North Star

A Year of Igniting Change: Leading on Opportunity in 2019

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Early Care & Education

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Imagine What We Can Be Together - Our North Star

Our Commitment to the Community

ENGAGE. AMPLIFY. INFLUENCE. CHANGE.

Our voices and backgrounds are diverse. And we share a common North Star goal: Within a generation, every child in Charlotte-Mecklenburg will have an equal chance to achieve social and economic success.

Through Leading On Opportunity's community-informed strategies: we engage diverse voices uplifting community; weamplifystories and data shifting the narrative and celebrating community success; weinfluencepolicies and practices building public will and shared accountability ultimately resulting in transformative change.

Our stakeholders are committed individuals, grassroots community leaders, activists, politicians, businesses, government, communities of faith and nonprofits willing to influence systems and community change. Together, we can create new pathways of opportunity so every child, youth and family in Charlotte-Mecklenburg can rise.

A Wake-up Call

In 2014, the Chetty Study ranked Charlotte last among the 50 largest US cities and Mecklenburg 99 out of 100 counties in upward mobility. Access to economic opportunity in Charlotte-Mecklenburg is far too often aligned with the zip code where one lives. In response, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Opportunity Task Force led by Dr. Ophelia Garmon-Brown and Dee O'Dell, released the Opportunity Task Force Report intended to be a living document offering 21 strategies, multiple recommendations and tactics to engage our community while establishing the Leading on Opportunity Council, led by James E. Ford and Andrea B. Smith, to continue the work forward through implementation. Laying the foundation of the work the Opportunity Task Force reports calls us, individually and collectively, to take bold action in the years ahead so together, we earn a new reputation as a community that is "Leading on Opportunity."